Figure 1.-- The Red Army found these children when they entered Birkenau (Auchwitz II). Here just after liberation, the children are being looked after by Polish Red Cross Sisters. They have been brought to the hospital in the main camp (Auschwitz I). The camp uniforms indicate that the NAZIs formally processed them into the camp, a process that included tatooing for identification. (Unless they were just given the uniforms to wear in the cold winter weather.) We are not sure just who these children were. They were probably not Jewish. The most likely possibility is that they were the children spared during anti-partisan opeations.

We are attempting to assess the presence of children at the NAZI Birkenau Concentration Camp (Auschwitz II). Almost all of the children in the incoming tranports of Jews at Birkenau were sent directly on arrival from the selection platform to the gas chambers and killed. There were children at the family camp and at the Gypsey camp. Both groups, however, were killed before the Soviets liberated the Camp (January 1945). When the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, however, they found some surviving children. Some of these children were found at Birkenau. Some had camp uniforms some did not. We do not know much about these children. As far as we can tell they were not identified and records do not exist as to just who they were. The Soviets do not appear to have compiled records or at least we have been unable to find any information as to the identity of the children. We believe that they were probably children spared during the dreadful NAZI anti-partisan operations in the western Soviet Union and Poland. Thus these would not have been Jewish children. Most of the Jews in these areas were killed in 1941 as part of the NAZI Operation Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union. Whole villages were razed in the anti-partisan operations and the populations murderd (1943-44). In some cases the children were spared abd transported to concentration camps. We believe that these are the children that the Soviets found, at least most of the children. There may be other children at Birkebau, but the anti-partisan operations seems to be the primary source of the children at Birkenau.

Created: 10:47 PM 5/29/2008
Last updated: 10:47 PM 5/29/2008